Richard Branson

Be afraid, aliens. He's 6'5", 220, and there's two of him.

Get ready for a sentence that would not have made sense to you even one year ago: Wonder Twin entrepreneurs Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are officially going to space via the Virgin Galactic program, and they're paying the entire exorbitant $250,000 fee in bitcoin. In other news, we live in the future and it is ridiculous.

WTF with Marc Maron is one of the most popular, and best, podcasts on the Internet. It's on the radar of most comedy geeks, but Maron interviews people from a few different worlds, including the world of Hollywood. The latest episode features an interview with Michael Keaton, who many forget started as a comic, and the two talked about Batman, Beetlejuice, and Keaton's role in the upcoming Robocop reboot.

Supergirly

For anyone who isn't up on their superheroes at the moment, Captain Marvel is the current alias of Carol Danvers (yes, a Marvel superhero, not like that guy who shouts Shazam, and now also goes by the name Shazam), an Air Force pilot turned superhero with a love for high altitudes, space, and saving the day.
We didn't immediately make the connection between Ms. Danvers and Kate Winslet when we heard that the latter was getting a free trip to space courtesy of uncle-in-law Sir Richard Branson, but then we dug into the details of the story and the details took a surprisingly heroic tint. The gift of the £124,000 ($200,000) ticket is partly a wedding present (Winslet married Branson's nephew earlier this month), and partly a gift of thanks for... saving his ninety-year-old mother from a fire. Really.
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When most folks think about starting a Mars colony, they usually only concern themselves with the scientists that would be involved with founding such an endeavor. Not Richard Branson, however. Though he admits that it would be scientists at first, he says that a colony on Mars would require all types. Fat folks, skinny folks, folks that climb on rocks -- all would be a welcome addition on Mars.

Director of films with one word titles like as Titanic and Avatar, James Cameron is aiming to accomplish something noteworthy that doesn't involve an Oscar, actors, or even vaguely cat-lookin' aliens; he's going to venture to the ocean's deepest depths. And maybe, just maybe, he'll find some aliens. The glowing purple and pink kind, not the cat-lookin' ones. The spot he's trying to reach, appropriately named Challenger Deep, is part of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific and the deepest known point in the world's oceans.

Normally having a spaceship split in half during reentry would be a bad thing, but the giant floating brains at Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites were hoping to do just that. Earlier this month in the Mojave desert, Richard Branson's space tourism company successfully tested the "feathered reentry" of their new spaceplane SpaceShip Two.
Unlike the space shuttle and virtually every other spacecraft designed to return to Earth, SpaceShip Two has no heat shield to protect it from the fiery friction between the space craft and the Earth's atmosphere. Instead, the unique ship's tail section splits and folds, quickly and safely decelerating the ship. By reentering slowly, there is no chance for friction to build up on the craft.
Today's demonstration is a major milestone for the company, as it verifies that the essential design of the craft is sound. If you ever wanted to blast off into space, but don't have the time for all that pesky astronaut training, your dream just got one step closer to reality.
(via Universe Today)

Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson's space-focused offshoot of Virgin Atlantic Airlines, completed its first successful flight, taking us one step closer to a world where rich people can pay $200,000 a ticket and have a quick flight above the Earth's atmosphere.

The "spaceship," called the VSS Enterprise, made it up to 45,000 feet before it glided back to the Mojave Air and Space Port. The Enterprise is carried up to the designated altitude by the Eve carrier before it is released and glides back down to Earth. The entire process took about 25 minutes, though hopefully after paying $200,000, passengers will get a little more space for their buck.

Gamesinduztry.biz reported this morning on a rumor that the newcoming Virgin Gaming service will be an online site providing players on opportunity to challenge each other and compete in tournaments using the most popular console titles. This whole report came at the hands of some truly master sleuthing work by the people over at MaxConsole.
It's truly an epic investigative saga, which you should read their account of, but for those who would rather see it summarized, here goes: They saw that the technical contact for VirginGaming.com was a Toronto-based company "codenamed" Entertainment Tech. And while the recording answered the phone "Welcome to Entertainment Tech" upon MaxConsole's call, the operator who picked up shortly after said "Welcome to Virgin Gaming." Gotcha!
Long story short, that operator referred them to worldgaming.com as an example of what Virgin's service would be.
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